Page 104 of Call of the Fathoms

Doctor Barker hovered over her a little too much. The man was incessant that she be completely healed before he even let her out of his sight, which she knew very well had to do with the massive undine hovering just behind him. It was like Fortis thought if he left her alone for even a moment, then she would die.

She wasn’t going to die. Alexia had survived worse than this.

“I really am going to be fine,” she reminded Fortis, as she leaned back on the hospital bed and looked up at the familiar ceiling. “I survived a stabbing where they cut into every single one of my major organs before I killed them.”

Doctor Barker hummed low under his breath. “I remember that one. That was a squabble between Harlow and one of the other Originals, wasn’t it?”

“Lester, I believe.”

“Right, Lester.”

Fortis leaned into her line of vision, his voice a storm cloud of anger. “Why were you stabbed by this Lester?”

“Oh, Lester didn’t do the stabbing. None of the Originals get their hands dirty. He had his guard stab me fourteen times for a slight from Harlow. He didn’t like her, she didn’t like him. They were always fighting about something. I took the stabbing that was meant for her, and they considered their differences settled for the day.”

She winced as Barker wove a thread through her sensitive skin. Usually stitches didn’t hurt this much, or maybe she was just better at handling them while she was on emotion manipulating drugs.

Fortis snapped his jaws at the Doctor. “Careful with that.”

“S-sorry,” Barker stuttered, but then the damned man’s hands started shaking. “I’m not used to stitching people with an audience.”

She sighed and reached for the doctor’s hands. Gently holding them in one of her own, Alexia gave him a little squeeze and a soft smile. “You are not used to working on people who can feel as much as I can now feel. It’s all right, Doctor Barker. Do your best. I have endured far worse pain than this.”

He stared at her, his eyes widening and his pupils blowing out until his eyes were little more than black. “I don’t know how to respond to this kind version of you, Alexia. You were always so practical and so insistent on doing your job and nothing else. It is hard to look at you like this and see the same person.”

“I’m not the same person.” Though that didn’t sit right after she said it. Alexia tilted her head to the side, looking at Fortis while Doctor Barker started stitching her back together again. “Or I guess I’m more myself than I ever have been before. I’m the same person, just... allowed to be me now.”

She stared into Fortis’s dark gaze the entire time Barker worked on healing her. She didn’t flinch again, because she didn’t need to be afraid of any pain while her depthstrider was here.

It didn’t take very long. There was medicine that accelerated her healing and was designed to work with her body. The genetics they poured into their guards were designed so that she could be injured a thousand times and wouldn’t take that long to be back in fighting order. She could endure more than the average person, but now, as she looked into her future with this massive sea creature, she knew she wouldn’t have to be as prepared to hurt.

Not, at least, unless she wanted to defend the people she now called family.

Doctor Barker held up a needle, but then froze when Fortis bared his teeth and all his gills flared wide.

“Alexia?” Doctor Barker asked, his voice once again shaking. “These are the steroids that should speed up your healing. Would you like me to inject you?”

“Yes please.”

“You don’t have to,” Fortis told her. “You don’t have to take anything again.”

Oh, this sweet, sweet man. He clearly didn’t trust that Doctor Barker wouldn’t inject her with all manner of drugs, or even try to kill her. Or maybe he feared that the doctor would try to put her back to the way she had been before, and that she wouldn’t be able to make decisions for herself anymore.

Alexia reached for Fortis this time, grabbing onto his hand and drawing it to her cheek. “He’s not going to hurt me, Fortis. They’re just steroids.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’ll help heal me faster, just like after the squid attack. It’s not the first time I’ve taken this, and it certainly won’t be the last.” She nodded at the doctor and held Fortis’s gaze as the needle pressed through her skin.

The steroids always worked fast, and these would be even faster than the ones she’d taken from Mira. Soon, she wouldbe well enough to see the others. Because she could feel the apprehension in the air.

They’d done it. They’d taken over Tau, even though right now it was a tenuous hold, and now they weren’t sure what they were going to do with it.

She pushed herself upright and swung her legs over the bed, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Doctor Barker, do you ever think about how delicate this city really was? For all those years, we thought it was entirely impenetrable. No one would ever destroy Tau, even if it was the only city left in the sea. And now...”

“Now we live to see it fall,” he murmured. The Doctor slumped in his chair and then ran his hand over his face. “I believe our folly was always in believing it was strong. There is no certainty in life, and no certainty in this. We created beings in these walls, manipulated our own genetics, played god for so many years, it was hard to imagine that it would last forever. I... I am glad to see it end. Even if it was far easier to tear it all down than I ever believed it would be.”

She smiled, but it was a sad expression at the same time.

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